T&T health minister urges PANCAP to help Caribbean cure HIV

Mar 24, 2024 News

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Kaieteur News – Trinidad and Tobago’s Health Minister, Terrence Dyalsingh, at the recently concluded meeting for the National AIDS Programme (NAPS) Managers and key partners urged The Pan Caribbean Partnership against HIV and AIDS (PANCAP) to position the Caribbean to develop a cure for the HIV virus.

The meeting was organized by PANCAP and was held in Trinidad from March 19-20, 2024.

Delivering the feature address at the meeting’s opening ceremony last Wednesday, the T&T minister charged participants to look towards the future for a cure for HIV, particularly through gene editing.

“If we want to hit 95-95-95 by 2025, we need to think exponentially. We need to think of geometric progression, not linear progression,” the Minister reportedly said.

He further highlighted that “There are several opportunities presented across the region over these past few years to explore social contracting and to use social contracting or whatever variation of that modality we want to use to ensure that civil society continues to have a presence in our national response and support national programme managers.”

In referencing a study from North Western University titled “CRISPR and HIV: New technique in human blood unveils potential paths toward cure – Key to possible HIV cure may lie in mechanisms behind how it replicates,” the Health Minister believes that the Caribbean should strategically position itself towards contributing to a cure for HIV.

“I think it is time for us to look as a region to join with one of those research universities so that we are in the door. In so doing, we would have contributed toward finding a cure, so that when that cure comes, we would have access to it. I am challenging PANCAP to find a way to get on to the bandwagon of CRISPR gene editing to find a cure so that when that cure is found we can say that PANCAP was there; that we had skin in the game.”

CRISPR is an acronym for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats and is a technology that research scientists use to selectively modify the DNA of living organisms.

Meanwhile, Dr. Ayanna Sebro, Representative of the Network of National AIDS Programme Managers, and Technical Advisor, National AIDS Commission, Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, in her remarks, addressed the need for decisive action to address some of the lingering challenges related to accessing HIV medications within the region.

“As we contextualise the implementation of activities and regional access to sustainability, funding, monitoring resources, quality prevention treatment and care across the Caribbean network, we must be intentional in our efforts around procurement and timely access to supplies to remain up-to-date in terms of our access for essential supplies and to mitigate stock outs. We must actively pursue agreements to facilitate access to newer supplies for diseases of public health concern are especially important where patents create obstacles.”, she said.

Also addressing the participants at the meeting, Executive Director of Caribbean Vulnerable Communities Coalition, Ivan Cruikshank, recognised the many achievements made within the region as it relates to HIV; central to which he mentioned the role of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs).

However, he lamented the shrinking presence of CSOs since COVID-19.

“We have to find ways of getting communities and civil society to be much more engaged in the treatment and care side of the pillars. Since COVID-19, there has been a decline in the presence and activism of civil society across the regional response,” Cruikshank said.

“This meeting has to be a clarion call to governments to ensure that civil society remains vibrant and has sustainable resources to be able to support national programmes to deliver on these prevention targets.”, he added.

The Assistant Secretary-General from the Directorate of Human and Social Development CARICOM Secretariat, Alison Drayton joined Ivan Cruikshank, recognising the commendable progress achieved in HIV prevention and treatment throughout the region but noted the many challenges that are still being endured.

She urged that innovative initiatives to address those challenges commence with alacrity.

“The UNAIDS 2022 Global AIDS Update furnishes us with a comprehensive snapshot of the HIV landscape in the Caribbean. The region has committed to ambitious targets, aiming for 95-95-95 by 2025 and the end of AIDS by 2030. As of 2022, we stand at 83% awareness, 68% on antiretroviral therapy, and 57% virally suppressed. To bridge this gap, we must expedite the adoption of innovative, evidence-based interventions such as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and HIV self-testing.”, she said.

The two days of meeting ended on Thursday March 20 with participants exploring various strategies to be utilised in scaling up their work on HIV and other STIs in their respective countries.

Discussions also revolved around scaling up HIV self-testing throughout the region, so that countries can reach their prevention targets with greater efficiency. HIV self-testing (HIVST) has shifted the paradigm for HIV testing, the first step in the care continuum.

Through concerted regional efforts, the scale-up of HIVST will result in substantial progress in HIV testing, prevention, and care, and can result in countries conquering the first 95 in the prevention targets, in which people living with HIV (PLHIV) know their status.

The meeting further spotlighted the urgent need for the examination of the various national and regional policies and programme responses as it relates to HIV treatment and care, to reflect a person-centred differentiated model of care.

Utilising the person-centred approach that simplifies and adapts HIV services across the cascade in ways that both serve the needs of people living with or vulnerable to HIV, can reduce unnecessary burdens on the health system within the region. Greater emphasis on person-centred care where the individual matters and not their designation must be paramount. There were discussions on the strengthening of efforts to shift diagnostics away from healthcare facilities. It was also proffered that sustainable systems for community-based delivery and expanding access to person-centred treatment and prevention services must be developed more broadly.

There were also discussions on the need for major emphasis to be placed on how children are treated within the general HIV response. Moreover, there must be more strategic efforts at anchoring the treatment of children into the various Maternal and Child Health (MCH) programmes available.

Increased use of ICTs must form part of the overarching regional HIV response, enabling advocacy, mobilization, and empowerment of people living with HIV (PLWHA), women, and other vulnerable groups. The use of certain ICT platforms reduces costs and can potentially reach people on a more targeted level. The use of telemedicine was also discussed as a means of accessing hard-to-reach communities that may pose a challenge to other forms of ICTs.

The need for strong, cohesive community responses was also ventilated during the meeting. To provide much-needed support to national HIV responses, there must be a heightened role for communities to play. These communities must have a more defining role not only in HIV but also in health generally.

Policymakers, programme managers, representatives of civil society organisations, the community of people living with HIV and those at highest risk for HIV, attended the two-day meeting.

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• managers, NAPS, PANCAP, T&T health Minister, Terrence Dyalsingh

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